Monday, 25 August 2014

Porky Pig on Sunset Boulevard

One of the uncountable great moments in “You Ought To Be in Pictures” is when Porky Pig drives like a maniac to get back to the Warner Bros. cartoon studio. It’s point-of-view footage with Porky and his little car weaving in and out of traffic. I don’t know how someone shot it without being killed. The camera must have been on a motor scooter or something.

Mark C. Bloome was near Sunset and Wilcox. Bloome ran a chain of tire stories. The Los Angeles Times published this obituary.

Bloome has gas for 13 9/10 cents a gallon. You may cry now.

Next, Porky whizzes by Fiedler Field. There were two ball parks by that name. The first was at Sunset and Ivar, seating 1,500 in splinty seats (the second park at 420 Fairfax was considerably larger). Both were named for Colonel Marty Fiedler, a huge promoter of women’s baseball. Note the Coca-Cola sign.

To your right is Chappell’s Cafe.

There are cars galore in this scene, but only one I can identify. The second car to your right is a 1936 Studebaker Dictator Coupe. You can tell by the bat-wing rear window. Evidently the people at Studebaker didn’t think that “Dictator” was a really poor choice for a name in the ‘30s.

The signal says “GO,” Porky. No amber lights back then.

And this frame is about the clearest one of a sign post in the whole scene. If you blow up the picture enough, you can make out a “Gower St.” above the traffic light. Porky is now in the famous Gower Gulch, where the cowboys from the San Fernando Valley would hang out hoping to get work as extras in movie westerns.

At the corner of Gower and Sunset is Columbia Drugs (you can kind of make out the Columbia sign on the building. I suspect it’s called that because the studios of the Columbia Broadcasting System (KNX) in Columbia Square were almost kitty-corner. It’s also mere steps (or stumbles, as the case may be) from Brittingham’s, the bar of choice of Tedd Pierce.

Here’s a shot of the same corner taken from atop CBS in 1940, Brittingham’s roof in the foreground. The water tower may give an idea how far this is from the Warners lot. The Jerry Fairbanks studio is a block north of the drug store at Sunset and Beechwood, with the Hollywood Film Labs next to it. Both were buildings that date back to the silent film days.

And the same area today. No Columbia Drugs, no Porky, but the old Fairbanks studio and Film Labs building survive (though not visible in this picture). The bench and the traffic light are gone, too, but the palm tree that was next to them has grown a bit.

Perhaps this is a better indication about how far Gower Gulch was from the Schlesinger studio on the Warner lot. The building at Fernwood and Van Ness is still used by KTLA. Brittingham’s and the old CBS building next door have been gutted.

Thus ends our little tour down Sunset Boulevard of 1940, just one of the delightful things in this great Friz Freleng cartoon. The combination of live action and animation, the staff cameos, Daffy’s singing and dancing, even Leon Schlesinger’s acting make this a terrific cartoon by any standard.

"Both were named for Colonel Marty Fiedler, a huge promoter of women’s baseball."

Given that bit of info I never heard of before, I'm also surprised to see nothing comes up for this guy at all. This is the first post that shows up on Google too. Quite sad really if there's nothing currently commemorating his memory at all. Seems no different from the names of local people who shaped my town's history over the years that simply vanish because people forgot the efforts they contributed that meant something I feel I can only appreciate at all.

"The second car to your right is a 1936 Studebaker Dictator Coupe. You can tell by the bat-wing rear window. Evidently the people at Studebaker didn’t think that “Dictator” was a really poor choice for a name in the ‘30s."

The things that history tarnishes forever.

"And this frame is about the clearest one of a sign post in the whole scene."

Damn those were fine-looking signs. LED's do nothing for me.

"The bench and the traffic light are gone, too, but the palm tree that was next to them has grown a bit."

Thank god they didn't cut that down then. My town had one street that was just lined with trees on each boulevard that had to get the axe when they upgraded the power lines recently or some other junk. It was pretty sad to see a neighborhood transform so quickly in my lifeitme.

"Thus ends our little tour down Sunset Boulevard of 1940, just one of the delightful things in this great Friz Freleng cartoon. The combination of live action and animation, the staff cameos, Daffy’s singing and dancing, even Leon Schlesinger’s acting make this a terrific cartoon by any standard."

And further I keep looking at photographs of Toledo of this period as well, since I have a lazy eye for that sort of thing.